You are here

Home»news»GAFCON Leaders Increase Heat on CofE and call for Revolt against the Archbishop of Canterbury

GAFCON Leaders Increase Heat on CofE and call for Revolt against the Archbishop of Canterbury

GAFCON Leaders Increase Heat on CofE and call for Revolt against the Archbishop of Canterbury

Despite its enduring historical symbolism, Canterbury can no longer be the defining center, but through the GAFCON movement, a growing number of faithful Anglicans are now recovering their true identity in the gospel itself as the Bible is restored to its rightful place at the heart of the Communion.

The Church of England is going through contortions trying to explain why it says it is holding the line on traditional marriage, while at the same time saying they want to be a radically inclusive church open to all regardless of sexual orientation and behavior.

Contortionist-in-chief, Justin Welby, is doing handstands or backflips trying to include sodomy, while at the same time trying to persuade, or to placate, the Global South (mostly African) Primates that really nothing has changed in the C of E about who should have sex with whom. One doubts that even Houdini, the illusionist and stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts, would have a better understanding of how to escape this one.

By any reckoning, a new day has dawned in the Church of England, and, by extension, the whole Anglican Communion and none of it bodes well for the mother church.

An invigorated GAFCON leadership under take-no-prisoners Nigerian Primate, Nicholas Okoh, blindsided too many times by the theological prevarications and lies of Justin Welby, has now stepped up to the plate and is calling for open rebellion against the Archbishop of Canterbury's leadership and the place of Canterbury as the official seat of the Communion.

Even as Welby remains "first among equals" and the de facto head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, GAFCON leaders say that Canterbury can no longer consider itself the center of the Anglican Communion. They are not arguing for a new geographic center, rather the gospel itself as the Bible is restored to its rightful place, should be at the heart of the Communion.

Hence, there will be no formal split, but a steady, Dunkirk-like ecclesiastical invasion led by African primates and their followers on the British Isles and the Church of England. They have found proxy partners among large Evangelical parishes who are about the only ones in the Church of England who are holding fast to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

It all came to a head this week after a humiliating defeat by General Synod's bishops, when the clergy rejected a report by the House of Bishops recommending that there should be no change in the Church's traditional teaching on marriage and sexuality. It signaled a permissive approach in practice to homosexuality and opened a door to a de facto acceptance of a sexual behavior explicitly proscribed by Scripture.

Following the vote, the Archbishop of Canterbury repeated his call for "a radical new Christian inclusion" language that we have heard for many years from the Episcopal Church. Without doubt, this is a watershed moment with the Church of England, now set on the same downward spiral as the Episcopal Church of the United States and other Provinces that have taken it upon themselves to reinvent fundamental Christian doctrine.

GAFCON, UK, commented that "The confusion created by the General Synod vote on 15th February makes it abundantly clear that a new vision is now needed of what Anglican Christianity in England can and should be."

Canterbury can no longer be the defining center, but through the GAFCON movement, a growing number of faithful Anglicans are now recovering their true identity in the gospel itself as the Bible is restored to its rightful place at the heart of the Communion.

It is also now clear that Welby has lost the plot, and the historical symbolism of Canterbury has also gone. In the end, he will prove no better than his predecessor, Rowan Williams, who departed eight years before he had to. The only difference is Welby's evangelical ALPHA gloss, but that will not be enough to support him in a crisis that demands a bishop be a shepherd of the sheep and not the sheep who seem to have taken over the shepherds. The church is not a democracy. Scripture calls for radical repentance not radical inclusion.